"...the egg of the world"

These others stand with you,
squinting the city into place,
yet cannot see what you see,
what you would see
—a vision of these paths,
laid out like a star,
or like a body,
the seed vibrating within itself,
breaking into the open,
dancing up to stop at the end of the universe.
I say your vision goes as far as this,
the egg of the world,
where everything remains, and moves,
holding what is most against it against itself,
moving, as though it knew its end, against death.


From "Benjamin Banneker Helps to Build a City" by Jay Wright.

A short bio of Benjamin Banneker is here.

Garden of Earthly Delights (detail), Heironymus Bosch, c.1500